U.S. seeks North Korean amnesty for American jailed for 15 years

By Ju-min Park and Paul Eckert

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea sentenced an American citizen to 15 years of hard labor on Thursday for what it said were crimes against the state, prompting the United States to call for his immediate release to keep him from becoming a bargaining chip between the two countries.

Kenneth Bae, 44, was born in South Korea but is a naturalized U.S. citizen and studied psychology for two years at the University of Oregon. His sentencing comes after two months of saber-rattling that saw North Korea threaten the United States and South Korea with nuclear war.

Pyongyang has previously tried to use American prisoners as negotiation assets in talks with Washington. Washington is not looking for an envoy to try to secure Bae's release as it has sometimes done, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the United States has sought in recent years to break out of a pattern of having to resolve repeated crises with North Korea through transactional deals.

"We urge the DPRK (North Korea) to grant Mr. Bae amnesty and immediate release," State Department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. It was not clear if Bae had been taken immediately to jail.

Bruce Klingner, a former CIA North Korea analyst, dismissed the idea that Bae's release would trigger the renewal of long-stalled diplomacy.

"Previous arrests of U.S. citizens didn't lead to changes in North Korean policy, resumption of bilateral dialogue or breakthroughs in U.S.-North Korean relations," said Klingner, a senior fellow at Washington's Heritage Foundation think tank.

Human rights activists in South Korea say Bae may have been arrested for taking pictures of starving children.

FAMILY SAYS 'BAFFLED'

Bae is "a committed Christian," said David Ross, director of a missionary training center at Antioch World Ministries Inc in Monroe, Washington.

"He has feelings for orphans and has done some ministry work feeding orphans," added Ross, who said he has been a casual acquaintance of Bae since they met four years ago through church affiliations in Hawaii. "He has a missionary heart," Ross said.

Bae's mother, Myung-Hee Bae, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview that she had last spoken to her son on April 23 and that he told her during the call that he was well. Myung-Hee Bae, who lives in the Seattle area, said it was the only call she had received from her son since he was detained.

His sister, Terri Chung, told CNN in an interview that he had been working as a tour guide bringing people from China into North Korea and that he had never before run into trouble doing so.

"We can't really know for sure why he would be arrested. He's only had the biggest heart for the people and the nation of North Korea," she said. "We are baffled just like anybody else about why a man like my brother could be arrested."

"We just pray and ask for leaders of both nations to please just see him as one man caught in between and we just ask that he be allowed to come home," Chung said.

Bae was one of five tourists who visited the northeastern North Korean city of Rajin in November and has been held since then. The State Department recommends that U.S. citizens avoid travel to North Korea, although it does not block trips.

"U.S. citizens crossing into North Korea, even accidentally, have been subject to arbitrary arrest and long-term detention," reads the department's travel warning, updated in March.

NEGOTIATING CARD?

Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has made numerous trips to North Korea that included efforts to free detained Americans, said Bae's case should not become entangled in the current U.S.-North Korea impasse.

"Now that the sentencing and the North Korean legal process has been completed, it is important that negotiations begin to secure Kenneth Bae's release on humanitarian grounds or a general amnesty," said Richardson, who visited North Korea in January with Google Inc CEO Eric Schmidt.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said any negotiations with North Korea were "dependent upon the North Koreans demonstrating a willingness to live up to their international obligations."

North Korea is the subject of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an end to its nuclear and missile tests, as well as punitive U.N. sanctions.

Some media reports have identified Bae as the leader of the tour group. NK News, a specialist North Korea news website, said he was the owner of a company called Nation Tours that specialized in tours of northeastern North Korea.

The reports could not be verified and North Korean state news agency KCNA did not list any specific charge other than crimes against the state, and used a Korean rendering of Bae's name, Pae Jun-ho, when it reported the Supreme Court ruling.

"North Korea has shown their intention to use him as a negotiating card as they have done in the past," said Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a think tank in Seoul.

North Korea appears to use the release of high-profile American prisoners to extract a form of personal tribute, rather than for economic or diplomatic gain, often portraying visiting dignitaries as paying homage.

'HEFTY' SENTENCE

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has traveled to North Korea before to try to free a detained American, has no plans to do so for Bae, Carter's spokeswoman said.

According to North Korean law, the punishment for hostile acts against the state is between five and 10 years' hard labor.

"I think his sentencing was hefty. North Korea seemed to consider his acts more severe," said Jang Myung-bong, honorary professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a North Korea law expert.

North Korea is one of the most isolated states on earth. Its official policy of "Juche," or self-reliance, is a fusion of Marxism, extreme nationalism and self-sufficiency centered on the cult of the ruling Kim family.

Bae likely will not be incarcerated in one of the North's notorious slave labor camps, such as the one where defector Kwon Hyo-jin was locked up. There, Kwon said, prisoners were worked to death and often survived only by eating rats and snakes.

"If an American served jail together with North Korean inmates, which won't happen, he could tell them about capitalism or economic developments. That would be the biggest mistake for North Korea," said Kwon, a North Korean sentenced to a camp for seven years until 2007. He defected to South Korea in 2009.

"(Bae) would be sent to a correctional facility that only houses foreigners and was set up as a model for international human rights groups."

Bae's sentencing brought bad back memories for Euna Lee, one of two U.S. journalists sentenced to 12 years in 2009 and released only after a visit to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton. She cried out loud in the courtroom when her labor camp sentence was handed down.

"The word 'labor camp' took the tiny hope I had away from me. I was physically and mentally weak and I really thought I would not make it home," South Korea-born Lee said via email.

Lee, then a journalist for Current TV, said her 12-year sentence included two years for illegal border crossing and 10 for the "hostile act" of making a documentary on North Koreans who risk their lives fleeing their country for nearby China.

Bae was given counsel by the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. The embassy has declined to comment on the case and Ventrell said the Swedes did not attend Bae's trial.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in Seoul, Matt Spetalnick and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Laura L. Myers in Seattle and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Alistair Bell, David Brunnstrom and Mohammad Zargham)

View the original article here

Exclusive: Aid groups to suffer if EU sanctions North Korean bank

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) - European aid groups operating in North Korea might have to hand-carry cash into Pyongyang or stop work altogether if Washington convinces the European Union to sanction the reclusive country's main foreign exchange bank, aid workers said.

Germany and France had already expressed concern about the possible impact on aid groups as well as European embassies in Pyongyang should the EU sanction the Foreign Trade Bank, separate sources said. Many foreign entities with offices in North Korea use the bank.

Washington announced sanctions in March, saying the bank helped fund Pyongyang's banned nuclear program. Japan followed suit last week while Australia is expected to do the same. [ID:nL3N0CH0VZ] The U.S. measures prohibit any transactions between U.S. entities or individuals and the Foreign Trade Bank.

Embassies, non-governmental organizations and U.N. agencies such as the World Food Programme use the Foreign Trade Bank. It is the last major institution in North Korea for legal international transactions and Pyongyang specifically required NGOs to use it, aid workers said.

"You can't operate without the bank," said Katharina Zellweger, who headed the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Pyongyang from 2006-2011. "Except if you carry in suitcases of cash. But I don't think that is the right way to go."

NO EU PLAN ... YET

No firm EU proposal to sanction the bank has so far been put forward, diplomats in Brussels said, although they did not rule out that it could be added to the EU sanctions list against North Korea at some point.

A U.S. State Department official told reporters in Brussels on March 26 that Washington hoped the EU looked "hard" at imposing sanctions. The intention was not to hurt NGOs that did legitimate work, the official added.

"We will work through any concerns that arise related to purchases of humanitarian goods, but it is critically important that we isolate FTB for its facilitation of proliferation activities," an official from the U.S. Treasury Department told Reuters last week.

NGOS TAKE CONCERNS TO EU DIPLOMATS

About six European NGOs have offices in North Korea. Their work focuses largely on humanitarian aid and agricultural development projects. American NGOs work in North Korea but none have a permanent office in the country.

Countries with embassies in Pyongyang include Britain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. France has a cultural affairs office in Pyongyang but it is not a diplomatic mission. Washington has no diplomatic ties with North Korea.

European NGOs in North Korea said they had told EU diplomats the Foreign Trade Bank was vital to their work. Two sources with knowledge of those talks said France and Germany expressed concern during meetings in Brussels about the impact of sanctions on aid groups and embassies should the EU adopt them. French and German aid organizations have offices in Pyongyang.

Romania's Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Pyongyang depended on the bank to pay for utilities and other services and would struggle to operate if it was sanctioned. Bulgaria said its mission would not be affected. Other European countries declined to make on-the-record comments.

An EU official in Brussels said the adverse impact on NGOs, embassies and other organizations would need to be considered if measures were taken against the Foreign Trade Bank.

Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme in Rome, said the agency used the bank to receive and make payments and expected it would continue to do so. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has an office in Pyongyang, declined to comment.

Even if the EU took no action or gave an exemption to certain organizations, non-U.S. banks sending money to the Foreign Trade Bank will have noted Washington's sanctions.

Indeed, experts have said the U.S. move against the bank was designed to make foreign banks that do business in the United States think twice about dealing with the bank, much the same way banks have become wary about having ties with financial institutions in sanctions-hit Iran.

If entities in Pyongyang had to use the Foreign Trade Bank, they would end up spending a lot of time seeking clarity or an exemption to avoid hassle from the U.S. Treasury and their homebase bank, said George Lopez, a former U.N. North Korea sanctions monitor, now at the University of Notre Dame.

"Usually the latter (the homebase bank) is the group most nervous and difficult because its own reputational status is on the line," Lopez said.

OBSCURE BANK

Little is known about the Foreign Trade Bank, whose assets and investments are a state secret. It is also unclear where it has branches. Visitors to North Korea said its headquarters is a stately Soviet-style building near Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang.

Washington announced sanctions on the bank just days after fresh U.N. sanctions were imposed on North Korea for its February 12 nuclear test, the country's third. The U.N. sanctions tighten financial curbs on North Korea, including the illicit transfer of bulk cash, and crack down on its attempts to ship and receive banned cargo.

"If the EU extends sanctions to the Foreign Trade Bank, as the U.S. has done, then like all other embassies, U.N. organizations and NGOs in North Korea we too will have problems to implement our humanitarian projects here," said Bettina Beuttner, spokeswoman for the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, which has a base in Pyongyang. "If this happens, we do not yet know how we will be able to work."

A representative from another NGO in Pyongyang, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said if it became impossible to send money to North Korea the organization would have to freeze its programs.

Washington has targeted North Korea's limited financial links to the global community before. In 2005, some $25 million in North Korean money was frozen in a U.S. Treasury-inspired raid on Macau-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA), which Washington alleged handled illicit funds for Pyongyang.

Besides the EU, Washington has also spoken to China about the Foreign Trade Bank. David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told reporters he raised the issue with Chinese officials in Beijing last month, although he did not say what their response was.

It is unclear how much of the $6 billion in annual trade between China and North Korea goes through the bank. China is by far the North's biggest trade partner.

Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who has worked in Pyongyang and helped run a financial training programme for Foreign Trade Bank officials, said sanctions would be a "huge setback for economic development" in North Korea. "In the worst case scenario ... it would drive the economy underground. They would have to use cash couriers or other funny methods," he said.

Zellweger, who has studied small North Korean businesses and the country's economy, said local firms trying to do legitimate business would be pushed into what she called a "grey zone" if foreign companies stopped using the bank.

"It makes it so no one wants to do business with North Korea, even legal business," said Zellweger.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Ioana Patran in Bucharest, Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia, Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Anna Yukhananov in Washington; Editing by Dean Yates)

View the original article here

US to Add More Missile Interceptors to Counter North Korean Steps

Concerned by North Korea's long-range missile advances, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced today that the United States is bolstering its missile defense system by adding 14 more ground-based missile interceptors.

The additional missiles will be in place by 2017 and will bring the number of long-range missile interceptors from 30 to 44, an almost-50-percent increase. Currently, 26 interceptors are based at Fort Greely, Alaska, and four more at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Hagel cited recent North Korean actions as a motivator behind today's announcement and said the United States wants to "stay ahead" of any missile threats posed by North Korea and not have to react to North Korean developments.

Adding the 14 missiles "gives our country the security it needs and the people need to be reassured that that security is there," he said.

North Korea, he said, "recently made advances in its capabilities and is engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations."

He noted North Korea's third nuclear test in February, December's launch of a long-range missile that placed a satellite in orbit, and last year's public display of a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile known as the KN-08.

He expressed confidence in the ground-based missile interceptors that have been operational for more than eight years but have had some problems during tests.

"We are sure that we have the complete confidence that we will need," said Hagel. "But the American people should be assured that our interceptors are effective."

Hagel told reporters that the rationale for "advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency. And that's why we've made the decisions that we have."

He added that the United States did not want to be in a position to react to North Korean missile development timelines but "that we're ahead of any timelines of any potential threat."

Deploying the additional missiles will cost less than $1 billion and will likely begin after another missile test that is scheduled for the fall.

Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that the U.S. has been watching North Korea's missile developments "very, very closely " and that the U.S. missile defense program could always be tweaked, if needed.

"So we have continually built this hedge, a set of tools from which we can select if the threat either goes faster or slower than we thought," he said. "And so the Korean threat went just a little bit faster than we might have expected. [We] very simply pulled the tools off the shelf, and those four tools are what we're announcing today."

In addition to 14 more missile interceptors, Hagel also included a previously announced move to send an additional TPY-2 early warning radar to Japan. He added that there would be a two-year delay in the roll-out of the SM3-IIB missile as part of the European missile defense shield designed to counter a potential threat to Europe posed by Iranian long-range missiles.

Hagel also announced that the Pentagon would be begin environmental impact studies to add more ground-based missile sites in the United States. The administration has not made a decision about an additional site, but Congress inserted language in this year's defense authorization bill that required the placement of such sites along the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The KN-08 mobile missile has been of particular concern to U.S. officials since six of the missiles were first displayed on mobile transports during a parade in Pyongyang last April. The mobility offered by such a launcher system concerns U.S. intelligence and military officials because it makes tracking the missiles more difficult, especially if they are being prepared for a potential launch.

Though U.S. officials were uncertain as to whether the displayed North Korean missile may have been a fake, Winnefeld said it "probably does have the range to reach the United States." He could not provide additional details because, he said, the intelligence assessment of where the North Koreans are in their development of the missile's launch capabilities remains classified.

On Monday, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told the Asia Society that the U.S. will not "stand by while [North Korea] seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile that can target the United States." He said the U.S. remained committed to ensuring peace on the Korean peninsula and, "this means deterring North Korean aggression and protecting our allies."

Donilon said the international community "has made clear that there will be consequences for North Korea's flagrant violation of its international obligations."

Last week, in fact, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on North Korea after the nuclear test.

Winnefeld cited Donilon's comments about deterrence in explaining today's announcement.

"I think the national security adviser made it very clear in his speech on Monday that we not only intend to put the mechanics in place to deny any potential North Korean objectives to launch a missile to the United States, but also to impose costs upon them if they do," said Winnefeld. "And we believe that this young lad [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] ought to be deterred by that. And if he's not, we'll be ready."

Also Read

View the original article here

U.S. imposing new sanctions on North Korean bank: Obama aide

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury is imposing sanctions against North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank, the country's main foreign exchange institution, for its role in supporting Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, President Barack Obama's national security adviser said on Monday.

In a speech to the Asia Society in New York, the White House aide, Tom Donilon, also said China should not conduct "business as usual" with North Korea while Pyongyang threatens its neighbors.

"The United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state," Donilon said in prepared remarks. "Nor will we stand by while it seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile that can target the United States."

He said Washington was willing to negotiate with North Korea but Pyongyang must first take "meaningful steps" to meet its international obligations.

The State Department said on Monday it was designating for sanctions three individuals tied to North Korea's nuclear activities: Pak To-Chun, who heads the agency that manages North Korea's weapons production and arms exports; Chu Kyu-Chang, who directs that agency, the Munitions Industry Department; and O Kuk-Ryol, who is vice chairman of the North Korean National Defense Commission.

The Treasury Department on Monday also imposed sanctions on Paek Se-Bong, chairman of North Korea's Second Economic Committee, which oversees the production of North Korea's ballistic missiles.

North Korea uses the Foreign Trade Bank "to facilitate transactions on behalf of actors linked to its proliferation network, which is under increasing pressure from recent international sanctions," the Treasury said in a statement.

(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Mohammad Zargham)

View the original article here